Paradox Read online

  Baron put his head together with Hamid and a little wizened man with a skullcap and a spectacular gray beard falling halfway down a long blue robe that hung almost to the high tops of his green Converse knockoffs. The small man seemed to have charge of the beasts.

  When the conversation wrapped up Baron came striding purposefully back shouting orders to the acolytes. Looking bemused they started unpacking gear from the trucks. Suddenly, Annja saw a large group of men rise from behind the rocks up a slope to their left.

  Then she realized with some surprise that the men weren't armed. Instead they were throwing away cigarettes they'd been squatting out of the wind to smoke, which she hadn't smelled because the wind was blowing away from her. The men hadn't even been hiding, which unnerved her since she hadn't spotted them. They started gathering up the ropes trailing from the halters on the enormous shaggy two-humped beasts.

  "What's going on?" Jason demanded of Baron.

  Baron showed him a mirthless smile. "There's only one way around the Turkish army patrols, and the cars can't go, junior. So we're saddling up to ride. Old-school."

  * * *

  "SO DO THESE THINGS, LIKE, BITE?" Tommy Wynock sang out. The travelers rode in front of the long line of baggage animals. He had a video camera propped on one shoulder. With his other hand he hung on for dear life to the high pommel of his camel saddle.

  "Yes," Baron called. "Keep any fingers you want to keep away from their mouths."

  "But they're, like, so much fuzzier than real camels," Tommy said.

  "They are real camels, you dork," Trish said.

  "No, I mean, like, those ones on the old cigarette packs, like you always see in old movies with Arabs in them. The ones with one hump."

  "Those are dromedaries, these are camels," Jason Pennigrew said.

  "How much longer do we have to ride these ambulatory skeletons?" Robyn Wilfork called out. "Have pity on an old man's bones."

  "Not up to it, Wilfork?" Baron said.

  "Oh, cut him some slack, Leif," Charlie said. "I feel the same way." Annja had the strong impression he was aching to add the words I need a drink.

  "We've got some distance to make yet," Baron said. "Just a little longer tonight, though."

  "Aren't we past the army patrols yet?" Jason asked.

  "Nope."

  "Hey!" Larry Taitt called out. He fumbled his glasses, which had slipped down his nose, back into place and pointed.

  Looming up suddenly before them against the mauve evening sky was…a block, almost a cube, huge and featureless, with a white or sand-colored wall tinged pink and orange with light thrown horizontally beneath the canopy of clouds by the near-setting sun.

  "What's that?" Trish asked.

  Hamid had turned his camel and, swatting it lightly and deftly on the flanks with his whip, brought it trotting back along the line.

  "It is what they call here a khaan," he said.

  "It's a caravanserai," Annja said in amazement.

  "What's that?" Josh Fairlie asked.

  "It's, like, a Holiday Inn for camel caravans," Tommy said.

  Everyone looked at him in surprise.

  "You don't mean to tell me you've ever actually cracked a history book," Jason said.

  "I think I read it in an old X-Men comic," Tommy said.

  One of the other men, stocky and middle-aged, rode out in the lead on a mule. He was already halfway down the slope toward a high and broad arched opening in the wall. As they got closer Annja realized there were narrow windows around the upper stories. They looked like arrow slots. Or rifle loops.

  Both Jason and Tommy had their bulky video cameras balanced on their shoulders, with the rubber eyepiece guards pressed to their faces. "Loving this," Jason said.

  The arched door was actually a passage at least twenty feet long. As they rode through Annja craned her neck to look upward. In the gloom she couldn't see anything but shadowed stone.

  "Looking for murder holes?" Wilfork asked cheerfully.

  "What are those, Mr. Wilfork?" asked Levi, who rode right behind Annja clinging to his saddle with both hands.

  "They put them in the ceilings of the entrances to medieval European castles," Annja said. "They used them to pour stuff like boiling oil on unwelcome visitors. And yes, Mr. Wilfork, I was looking for them."

  Trish, who rode right in front of Annja, had passed into the open courtyard inside the caravanserai. She twisted around in her saddle. "You guys are sick," she said while scowling at them.

  "Not Levi," Annja said. "He was just asking a simple question."

  Trish glared at Annja for a moment then turned and rode away.

  They emerged into a wide courtyard. The tan ground was swept bare of snow and tamped hard. Around the courtyard the lower floor was lined with stalls with broad but pointed arches similar to the ones they entered through. A well of yellow-stuccoed mud-brick occupied the center of the large open square. Snow huddled in clumps against the south and west walls, dirty and with the glazed look that suggested it had partially melted and frozen over.

  Some of the stalls held animals. Some held men sitting cross-legged on carpets, smoking and arguing. Others stood empty. A gallery ran around the second floor. Beyond it were what looked like small rooms—or cells. Between the armed men walking along the gallery and at least a couple more on the flat roof, Annja got an impression of a prison more than of a hostelry.

  As the procession wound inside and around the central well the animals came to a halt. They brayed greetings to the beasts in the stalls. The human guests eyed the newcomers with an interest Annja hoped was only curiosity.

  "Holy crap, we're not actually going to stay here?" Jason said.

  "No," Hamid said. "You'll be at the Hilton over the next ridge where you cannot see. Paris Hilton herself, she will carry your bags."

  "But it's medieval," Trish said with disbelief.

  "It is Asia," Hamid said. "Not the Asia of the Chinese infidels or Singapura with its shiny skyscrapers. The real Asia. We are poor here. Things go as they always have, with little change."

  Annja couldn't help noticing that wasn't strictly true. She doubted, for example, that carvanserais in the heyday of the Silk Road had boasted any appreciable number of bicycles. Nor had many of the guests in Tamerlane's time sported Kalashnikov rifles, or auto-pistols thrust through their sashes. Much as they no doubt would have liked to.

  The caravan master had dismounted and gone to talk to several large men who stood not far from the entrance. Hamid joined them. Instructing the others to hang loose, Charlie followed Hamid. Larry Taitt trotted obediently behind.

  Stiffly everyone else climbed off their mounts. Annja stretched. Her back made interesting noises, creaking and popping, but it felt wonderful.

  The other inmates of the caravanserai either ignored them or eyed them with frank interest. "These totally look like the dudes who held Tony Stark hostage in the first IronMan movie," Tommy said with fanboy fervor.

  "Hold that thought," Baron said.

  "What kind of people do you think they really are?" Tommy asked.

  Jason shrugged. "Smugglers. Drug runners. Terrorists."

  "I don't know about you," Baron said, "but I intend not to go sticking my nose in their business, and hope they'll extend us the same courtesy."

  Trish glared at him. "What, you're not going to do anything about it?"

  "What, like call in an air strike on my cell phone? Then where would we spend the night?"

  "I thought you were the big law-and-order type," she said.

  He shook his head. "What you think of as the law doesn't reach here and never has. Most likely never will. Regardless of what you and I might prefer. But there's law here, just the same. The Old Testament patriarchs would feel right at home. And I think we'll find all the order we need."

  "You really think that?" Jason asked.

  Baron shrugged. "What I know is that we're a long way from home, and it's probably not a good idea to go making enemies. This isn
't New York City and we're the foreigners. Satisfied, junior?"

  Jason, Tommy and Trish all moved closer to each other and looked unhappy but they kept their opinions to themselves.

  The caravanserai turned out to be run by an indeterminate number of brothers, each one larger and more formidable than the last, and ruled over by an even bigger patriarch, who looked like Omar Sharif if Omar Sharif had turned into the Incredible Hulk, and whose white moustache was the largest Annja had ever seen on a human being. Then again she wasn't sure she'd ever seen a larger human being to go with it; but even at that he barely lived up to its magnificence.

  "Bismarck himself would go palsied with envy of that brush," Wilfork murmured. "I've only ever seen one greater, and that was on a Sealyham terrier."

  "The rules are simple," Hamid said, coming from the darkness and gesturing for the party to gather together near the well in the compound's center. He explained that the caravanserai was run by Gypsies—which he seemed to disapprove of—and that they were good Muslims, which he heartily approved of.

  "You want anything, you pay," he said. "You cause disturbance, they beat you with sticks and throw you out in the snow. You steal, they chop off your hand. You use a weapon, or threaten one of them, they kill you. Then it's your body they throw out in the hills."

  "They don't even give you a proper Muslim burial?" Wilfork asked.

  "They leave you for the wolves," Hamid said, nodding with approval.

  "Wolves?" Larry Taitt asked, his eyes saucer-like behind his glasses. For once his compulsive amiability seemed to have deserted him. It was such a startling transformation Annja suspected their guide had touched a raw phobia.

  "Like that's a big deal," Trish scoffed, her hands in the pockets of her thick down-filled jacket. "Wolves are never known to attack people."

  Hamid fixed her with a baleful dark eye. "This may be true in the land of clean sheets and the MTV. Our strong Kurdish wolves have steel in their spines," he said menacingly.

  Despite the talk of wolves, after piling the gear and saddles in several stalls, the caravan master and a couple of his drovers led the unloaded camels and mules back out into the cold evening. Hamid explained there was an enclosure on the far side of the caravanserai from the one they'd come in through.

  "Aren't they worried about bandits?" Josh asked.

  "Why?" Zeb asked.

  "They're all inside with us," Jeb said, finishing his twin's thought.

  Chapter 16

  Jason Pennigrew sighed with satisfaction.

  "It's all right out of the Arabian Nights," he said. "Except, of course, for the ridiculous French techno-pop blasting from somebody's iPod speakers. This may be Asia, the real Asia, but the modern age had made some inroads, looks like."

  "Hey," Tommy said. "We've got a whole wall to ourselves. Both floors."

  "There's benefits to traveling with a bazillionaire," Trish observed, lying back and stretching on a genuine Bokhara carpet—rented from the Gypsy proprietors—that covered the floor of one of the stalls. The trio shared it with Annja and the cheerful, myopic Rabbi Levi, although the coolness they still showed Annja indicated it might be a temporary arrangement at best.

  "But, how does he pay?" Tommy wondered aloud. "I mean, I doubt the Angry Moustache Gypsy Brothers take travelers checks, or will just, like, swipe his Visa plutonium card for him."

  "I wouldn't be too sure about that," Trish said. "I don't know if Charlie would use plastic, though. I don't think he wants to leave that kind of paper trail."

  "At any rate," Annja said, "we're probably better off not asking."

  Jason gave her a puzzled frown. He'd seemed more pained than censorious, as if trying to understand her rather than condemn. But now things seemed to have changed.

  "I don't get you, Annja," he said. "I thought you were one of us. Then you go all Rambo on those guys at the roadblock. And you sure seem to want to play the good German where our right-wing fundamentalist pals are concerned."

  Annja took a very deep breath to calm herself before responding. "The right-wing fundamentalist pals are paying for this expedition," she said. "Chasing History's Monsters is paying for you to tag along. And they've hired me as an expert."

  "Me, too," Levi said. He didn't seem to be interested in the political subtexts here, far less the cultural ones—neither impinged much on his personal solar system. But he seemed determined to show solidarity with Annja. Apparently he considered her a friend.

  And what better reason is there? Annja thought appreciatively. One way or another, his support comforted her.

  "Do you really think you should have taken the law into your own hands like that?" Trish asked.

  Annja sighed. "It looked to me as if it was me or nobody."

  "But you killed that man," Trish said.

  "His friends had just shot down poor Mr. Atabeg in cold blood. His friends were trying their level best to kill Charlie, Leif and Larry. And he didn't look as if he'd boarded the bus to give us a language lesson in Kurdish. He had a gun and he looked ready to use it. I saw my chance to stop him. So I did."

  The CHM trio passed tight-lipped, furrowed-brow looks all around.

  "But, you don't seem…upset," Trish said tentatively.

  "Why should I be? It's been hours since it happened. My heart rate's had plenty of time to settle," Annja said impatiently.

  "I didn't mean that. I thought…shouldn't you be overcome by guilt for taking a human life?" Trish asked.

  "Why should I feel guilty? I figured it was him or one of you. Or all of us. Why should I feel bad about the choice I made? I doubt he would have."

  "Cops always have bad dreams when they shoot somebody," Tommy said solemnly. "They have to go through mad therapy."

  "Some of them do," Annja said. "And they're all taught to say they are. But I've talked to plenty who haven't really been traumatized or anything like it."

  "But…why not?" Trish asked.

  Annja shook her head. "Listen. I may have nightmares tonight about what happened today."

  They looked relieved. She was starting to fit the profile again.

  "But I'll have nightmares about what could have happened if I didn't kill those men. If I'd missed. If they'd hurt or killed me. Or my friends. What they might have done to any survivors they captured."

  She paused for a moment to let that sink in. She hoped they'd be able to understand the position she was in.

  "But as for feeling bad about stopping somebody intent on doing something bad, intent on commiting murder—no. I don't feel remorse for that," she said plainly.

  Trish's eyes glittered with tears. She shook her head. "Oh, Annja, you seemed like such a nice person. And now I'm afraid you might be some kind of sociopath or something."

  "If you'd feel more comfortable I can go somewhere else. I'll find someplace else to room, too." She and Trish had accepted Charlie's offer to share a chamber upstairs for the night.

  "No. No. I don't want to…abandon you," Trish said.

  Don't want me to abandon you, Annja thought with a sudden stab of annoyance. She realized that Trish feared the other occupants of the caravanserai—including, most likely, some of the Young Wolves.

  It must be so weird and unhappy to live like that, she thought. To require so much violence to protect your lifestyle, and to impose your views on others yet be so terrified of those who exerted violence on your behalf. For all that she disagreed with them on just about every point, philosophically, Annja had great respect for pacifists. But that was real pacifists. Not those who smugly felt themselves morally superior while relying on men with uniforms and guns to do their dirty work for them.

  Still, she admitted to herself, we're not here to agree with each other. Nor to serve my bruised ego. She forced herself to smile.

  "That's very good of you," she said to Trish. "Look, I appreciate your concern. And I just have to ask you, please, to accept that we're different people with some different outlooks."

  Trish pressed her li
ps together. Annja guessed that for her part she was biting back on saying how glad she was that they were different.

  "Okay," Trish said. "I—"

  A figure loomed out of the courtyard darkness. Everybody tensed for a moment. Seeing it was Baron caused incomplete relaxation.

  "Chow's on," he said. "Better hustle your butts if you want to eat."

  "What is it?" Jason asked, standing and stretching like a big lean cat. "Meals Refused by Ethiopians?"

  "Got it in one."

  "Why use up our own supplies?" Annja asked. They might need their MREs to fuel them once they started their mountain-climing expedition. "I thought they sold food here," she said.